Edward Cohn

Recent Articles

W arning: The editorial comment you are about to listen to has not been endorsed by the management of the College of Law. Most academic commentators have arrived at contrary opinions. But--darn it--I'm right." Paul Cassell, a law professor at the University of Utah, often flashes this message to his students on an overhead projector. He is probably the nation's best-known conservative challenger to the legal status quo, and he revels in the role. In June, however, he seemed for a moment to have been stopped in his tracks. The Supreme Court upheld its 1966 Miranda ruling (made famous by TV police dramas in which suspects are told, "You have the right to remain silent... .") by the surprisingly wide margin of seven to two, decisively rejecting the legal reasoning behind Cassell's eight-year crusade to overturn the decision. But Cassell has promised to find other ways to press the issue, and Miranda , in any case, is just one of Cassell's three passions. He is also a leader in the...

Late last summer, the organizers of an annual convention called TechLearn '99 announced that two of the most famous icons of the 1980s would keynote the event. The first was Bill Cosby, one of the decade's most popular entertainers; the second was Michael R. Milken, the "junk bond king" who became a symbol of the decade's greed when he was sentenced to prison for securities fraud. Until recently, Milken's presence on the stage with Cosby would have seemed like a bizarre joke. But that juxtaposition is just one sign of an amazing comeback. When Milken was sentenced to prison on November 21, 1990, he was one of the most reviled men in America. But today, nearly a decade later, the 53-year-old Milken is everywhere. A survivor of cancer, he is the founder and chairman of CaP CURE (the Association for the Cure of Cancer of the Prostate) and the author of a best-selling cookbook featuring recipes for fighting cancer; he has also expanded the Milken Family Foundation, a philanthropic venture...

On July 15, in the midst of the summer tourist season, Chicago's Field Museum opened one of the most popular exhibits in its 100-year history. On display were almost 250 props from the Star Wars movies, including Darth Vader's mask, Princess Leia's gown, and an Ewok costume--all part of a traveling Smithsonian exhibit called " Star Wars: The Magic of Myth ."
But what's an exhibit on Star Wars doing in a natural history museum--or in any museum, for that matter? "It's a stretch for us," admits Field Museum spokesperson Pat Kremer. "But it's a way to bring new people in the door, who'll look at other things while they're here." That's powerful logic in an age of tight museum budgets, and if the goal is to bring in new visitors, "The Magic of Myth" has been a success. The exhibit attracted more than one million visitors while at the National Air and Space Museum
in 1997, setting a Smithsonian record. It has sold out every day at the Field Museum,...

"Can anyone explain this to me?" Regis Philbin asked his Who Wants to Be a Millionaire audience of 30 million one evening in February. "Why is it that nearly all of our contestants are white men? I'm a white man, so you know I have nothing against them, but come on... . We would really like a little more diversity!" He ended his monologue with an appeal to women and minorities. "So here's the challenge," he said. "Everyone out there who has thought about being on the show--who isn't a white male--dial that 800 number, and let's get into the game." Who Wants to Be a Millionaire , of course, has been a runaway hit since ABC imported it from Britain last August [see Joshua Gamson, TAP , "Other People's Money," January 31, 2000]. The show begins with a lineup of 10 contestants, who race to answer a "fastest finger" question in the speediest time; the winner then heads to the "hot seat," where he--or, occasionally, she--is asked a series of multiple-choice questions worth from $100 to $1...

Pat Buchanan's recent defection to the Reform Party has led to a lot of soul-searching within the Republican Party. Spurred in part by fears that "Pitchfork Pat" could siphon off votes from the next GOP nominee, Republicans of all stripes have been harshly critical of their onetime ally. That's understandable. What's more surprising, however, is the extent to which the GOP has rewritten the history of the last two campaigns to give Ross Perot all the credit for Clinton's presidential wins. Consider the following. In a September interview with Larry King, Pat Robertson denounced Buchanan as a spoiler likely to shatter the GOP's electoral hopes. "That's what Perot did," he noted. "If you go back, Perot got 19 percent of the vote in '92 and . . . about 8 percent in '96 in that Reform Party, and all they did was just throw the election to the Democrats." Henry McMaster, chairman of the South Carolina GOP, told The New York Times that Perot's 1992 campaign "certainly hurt George Bush. We...